


under starless skies we are lost

by kathillards



Category: Power Rangers, Power Rangers Dino Charge
Genre: Gen, Post-Finale
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-20
Updated: 2016-11-20
Packaged: 2018-09-01 04:22:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,456
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8607673
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kathillards/pseuds/kathillards
Summary: She sees echoes of him in places she never expected to find, threads of another life interwoven into her days, smiles she lost in a different lifetime. —- Kendall, after the end.





	

**Author's Note:**

> this is marked ivan/kendall but it's really more kendall/the team and ivan/the team and you can read it romantically if you want.
> 
> major spoilers for the dino charge finale 'end of extinction'. warning for character death and dealing with loss & grief.

**under starless skies we are lost**

She sees echoes of him in places she never expected to find, threads of another life interwoven into her days, smiles she lost in a different lifetime. The café empty in the morning, once filled with his voice; a practice sword leaning against a wall in the basement; a zookeeper who wears a coat too close to gold. Her memory grows fuzzier with time, but the ache in her heart remains.

Kendall is good at fixing things, at building things, at figuring things out. This, though, this half-life whispering at the corner of her mind, a museum she never ran, people she never knew – she doesn’t know how to deal with it.

She catches the after effects of the time portal on the rest of them, too. Tyler, looking up from a selfie, seeming confused that there’s nobody there to laugh with him. Shelby tracing the wall in the basement where once there were cave drawings. Chase coming back from the skate park looking a little lonelier than usual. Riley staring at his swordfighting dummy like he expects it to be real.

But it’s not real. They adjust to the absences the only way they know how – by filling the places their friends used to be with other things. Slowly, one by one, they all leave. New Zealand, the farm, adventures, school. Nothing keeps any of them anchored to Amber Beach, except for her.

Phillip’s letter arrives unbidden one evening, the Zandar seal on the front pulling at her heartstrings in a way it shouldn’t. Part of her filled with longing, part of her with indifference. Two lives warring within her head. It takes her a moment to remember to open it.

_Dear Ms. Morgan,_

_Found some boxes in the Zandar treasury that I thought might be of interest to you. Although you may not run a museum anymore, perhaps you can find some use for the statue – we already have one over here. Plus, I think you’ll find the books fascinating. Hope all is well._

_Regards,  
                Prince Phillip the Third of Zandar_

The boxes are waiting in the loading dock. It’s too late to ask any of the employees closing up shop to help her, so Kendall opens the biggest one herself. Her heart flips over itself when she sees what’s behind it.

SIR IVAN, THE LEGENDARY KNIGHT OF ZANDAR.

She remembers the statue so clearly from the other life, the museum exhibit, the snotty prince, the gold jewel, the knight inside the monster. It’s like she’s staring into another world. Another version of her that had no idea what this statue would bring, and the part of her that misses the not-knowing, the adventure to come, the person she was to become fiercely.

Quickly, she throws the sheet back over the statue. Ivan had never looked at her with anything less than fondness and respect when he had been alive, but the statue of him feels like it’s staring through her skin, straight to her bones, her beating heart, unraveling all the secrets even she doesn’t know about herself.

The next box is full of books. One of them is leather-bound, labeled: _The Journals of Sir Ivan the Knight of Zandar_. She picks that one up, leaves the rest for another time, for when her hands aren’t shaking so much. The final box is nothing but a cushion with a golden gem sitting atop it.

Kendall stares at it. The gem doesn’t glow. It doesn’t even twitch. For a second, she’s filled with the overwhelming sensation that she’s lost something amazing, like there’s a part of her world that’s hollow and always will be. Her heart clenches; she wants it to glow. _Needs_ it to glow. Needs it to mean something, be something, be more than what it is –

What it is, is the dead stone of a dead knight.

She closes the box and runs away. Part of her wants to look back, catch it glowing golden like a secret; the other part knows that it never will again.

-:-

The basement is empty. They turned into a rendezvous room at some point, filled with random items – practice dummies, weapons, broken skateboards, things that remind them of that other life. It’s almost turned into a shrine, now that nobody comes here anymore. Now that everybody’s left.

Kendall doesn’t like going in there anymore, but her feet lead her there tonight of their own accord. She stands in the center of what used to be their base, where nothing is anymore, feeling flashes of another life spin around her until she’s dizzy.

And then she collapses to the ground, Ivan’s journal clutched in her hands. Out in the zoo somewhere, she hears a dinosaur cry out in the night, and suddenly, she can’t stop crying. Can’t stop shaking. Her nails – purple, they’re purple, she’d painted them purple for some stupid reason, for no reason, for every reason – scratch down the leather of his journal, then dig into her palm, drawing blood.

The journal is probably worth a fortune. He’s one of the most famous knights of history, and she’s just a girl who used to know him in a life that never actually happened anymore. She stares down at it, her nail indents on the gold leather. She’s ruined one of the most important books in the Zandar treasury.

Not that it matters. Phillip’s never getting it back. She doesn’t think he really expects to.

Taking a breath, ignoring the tears tracking paths down her cheeks, she opens the journal. A letter falls out immediately, worn and faded with the years, preserved in an old envelope. She picks it up, turns it over, reads the front – _For my dearest friends._

It’s in Ivan’s handwriting. Fingers shaking, she slides the envelope open and unfolds the letter. Part of her thinks maybe she should wait for the others to join her, and then she remembers they’re gone, off living their own lives. Maybe they don’t even remember Ivan at all, memories of him, of Koda, of all of them together replaced by this strange familiar new world where dinosaurs roam the Earth and none of them ever held glowing gems in their hands.

She knows they do, though. Because she does. She traces her name on the letter and almost smiles.

_To my friends,_

_Tyler, Shelby, Chase, Koda, Riley, Prince Phillip, and Ms. Morgan – I miss you all more than words can say. I wish I could see you one day, but I know I will be long dead by the time you find this letter. I can only hope that I will have lived a life that you all would be proud of, were you here to see me._

_I find, as I near the end of my life, that I remember more and more of the times we shared. As if old age has sharpened my memory. Nobody else would understand, not my wife, nor my family, nor friends, so I’m writing this letter in the hopes that one day, one of you will hold this in your hands and remember something, too._

_We were heroes. I have fought alongside the bravest knights of Zandar, but never have I met people more worthy of the title of ‘hero’ than the seven of you. Perhaps it is wishful thinking for me to ever imagine a world where I stood next to you in battle, but my heart says it was true. We were a team. We stood together and faced evil, and we triumphed._

_It seems a shame that all that can fade so quickly. That Koda will be gone a hundred thousand years in the past. That I will never see any of you, or the museum, if it’s still there, or Amber Beach in my lifetime. At least, this lifetime. Much as I hate Fury for ripping me away from the life I had here, for keeping me in the darkness for all those hundreds of years – he gave me a gift._

_He gave me to you. He gave me the chance to be something more than what I was born into. Here, I am a knight, servant to royalty. At your sides, I was a hero who saved the world. I chose to return to my family, not knowing that in doing so, I would be losing one, as well. They say you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. I was given the worst of choices – my birth family, or the ones who took me in when I was alone. I still don’t know if I made the right one, or what I would choose if given the opportunity again. Perhaps I would still choose my home – but you are also my home._

_I miss you all. I hope, if you’re reading this letter, that the twenty-first century is treating you well. I hope the dinosaurs are still there – it has been such a rare delight to grow up surrounded by the beasts we once rode. I hope you all find happiness in the new lives we are given. I hope the world is still at peace._

_I hope we made a difference. Our time together was the most amazing time of my life, even if I can only remember bits and pieces. But what I do remember is more than enough. All of you are the best heroes this world – my world, any world – has ever known, will ever know. And you were the best friends I could ever have._

_Love,  
                Ivan, the gold ranger_

 

-:-

She puts the statue in the basement. The workers ask why she even has it, why the prince of Zandar would gift it to a zoo, shouldn’t it be somewhere more public, shouldn’t it be extravagant – she ignores them all. Ivan belongs in the base. She keeps the letter in his journal, keeps the journal on her bookshelf, loops the gemstone onto a chain and puts it around the statue’s neck.

Tyler and Shelby come to visit first, and it almost feels a little like home. Tyler places his own journal – one filled with monsters they fought in another life, adventures they maybe never had anymore – at the foot of the statue, like a shrine. Or a grave. Shelby folds a coat underneath Tyler’s journal – it’s brown and gold and unworn.

“We’ll come back,” Tyler promises her. She tries to smile. He has a life to life, and so does Shelby. And so does she. They can’t keep being haunted by ghosts. But Shelby squeezes her hand and tells her it’ll be okay, so Kendall tries to believe her.

Riley drives over next. She hadn’t expected him to part with his favorite sword, but he places it on the pile with a shrug. “Swords can be replaced,” he tells her. She understands what he’s not saying – _Friends can’t._ He picks up one of his old fencing swords propped up against the wall and slashes at a practice dummy with it.

“Still got it,” Kendall remarks, smiling at him. He grins, but he looks a little sad as he leaves both swords and practice dummy behind.

Chase flies from New Zealand a week after all the others. She doesn’t expect the book of cave drawings he brings with him, or the old broken bicycle that used to be Koda’s. He sets both down on the ground and turns to look at her, and then, before she knows it, he has his arms around her in a hug.

She hadn’t realized how much she needed it. He pulls back and says, “I know the cave drawings probably aren’t his but… I like to pretend. Maybe, somehow, one of them was Koda. He was always so good at them.”

Kendall smiles through the tears. “I know,” she whispers, burying her head in his chest. She remembers, vividly, for one moment, nights spent in the cold mountains, shivering, huddled together for warmth, searching for the blue energem, stumbling upon a frozen caveman. “He was so good.”

Phillip comes last, followed by a security detail befitting the crown prince of Zandar. He leaves them at the door to the basement and comes up to survey the statue, the growing shrine, the makeshift graves. Carefully, he pulls out a bar of gold and adds it to the pile, and then a denim vest lined with fur. She recognizes it immediately as Koda’s, but she’s not sure how – it’s not like he ever wore it, not here, not in this time.

“I had it made,” Phillip admits to her. “I know he won’t ever get to see it… but I like to think there’s a part of him still here. Like he’s watching over us. Like they both are.”

Kendall looks up at the statue of Ivan, the gold gem around his neck glimmering in the lights of the basement. “I like to think so, too,” she admits.

“Did you read his journal?” Phillip asks. “I must say, it felt strange, as if I were invading his privacy – but then, these journals have been published for centuries, so I don’t understand it.”

She wipes at a tear traitorously slipping down her cheek. “Because he was our friend,”  she tells him. “Not just a figure of history. I read them all. Nobody ever told me he named his children after us.”

Phillip smiles. “It took a while to confirm, before we found his journals, but he did. Koda, Phillip, and Shelby. I suppose the rest of our names would have been looked upon strangely in his time.”

“He was a good father,” Kendall muses, hand going instinctively to her throat where there is no energem. “And a good husband. And the best knight in the land.”

“Indeed he was,” Phillip agrees, pride filling his voice. “And Koda – Koda was the best friend we could ever have.”

“They were heroes,” Kendall says, voice shaking. “We were heroes.”

-:-

Some days, it’s easier to believe than the rest. _We were heroes_. She remembers the monsters, the battles, the magic, the power. Fighting alongside the power rangers. Being a power ranger. Being something more than who she was born to be.

_He gave me the chance to be something more than I what was born into._

Some days, she doesn’t even remember what Fury looked like. Doesn’t remember the sound of Ivan’s laugh, or the crinkle of Koda’s eyes when he smiled. Doesn’t remember the monsters or heroes alike. Doesn’t wear purple, those days.

But some days – some days, so many days, she loses count of the memories – she remembers everything. The people she knew, the person she was, the hero she became.

_We were heroes._

Most days, it means something.


End file.
